Detection of semantic conflicts in ontology and rule-based information systems

Nowadays, managers of information systems use ontologies and rules as a powerful tool to express the desired behaviour for the system. However, the use of rules may lead to conflicting situations where the antecedent of two or more rules is fulfilled, but their consequent is indicating contradictory facts or actions. These conflicts can be categorised in two different groups, modality and semantic conflicts, depending on whether the inconsistency is owing to the rule language expressiveness or due to the nature of the actions. While there exist certain proposals to detect and solve modality conflicts, the problem becomes more complex with semantic ones. Additionally, current techniques to detect semantic conflicts are usually not considering the use of standard information models. This paper provides a taxonomy of semantic conflicts, analyses the main features of each of them and provides an OWL/SWRL modelling for certain realistic scenarios related with information systems. It also describes different conflict detection techniques that can be applied to semantic conflicts and their pros and cons. Finally, this paper provides a comparison of these techniques based on performance measurements taken in a realistic scenario and suggests a better approach. This approach is then used in other scenarios related with information systems and where different types of semantic conflicts may appear.